Opeth
Sorceress
(Moderbolget Records / Nuclear Blast)
Among the many things we have to accept as reality in this world, such as people who don’t flush, or the nominees we are given during election time, is the fact that many people and works will continue to be revered well past their prime. Woe the Spectacle Of The Mundane, for thou art powerless to its affluence. Surely, we are all doomed because everyone has poor taste in music.
No names need to be given, but it’s fairly obvious that sometimes even the best of bands can become parodies of themselves; Of how that band you once cherished now recycles its formula and continues to be admired by critics and audiences alike for its name alone. Of how mere prestige can overshadow quality and can be a depressing aspect of liking things. Of how the act of liking things could be such an emotional endeavor to begin with.
By now, many people already have their opinions in their holsters for the new Opeth album regardless of even having heard it. Like any other entertainingly opinionated fanbase, there’s camps split between “new” Opeth and “old” Opeth, a binary form of judgment guaranteed to bring disappointment to each side at one time or another.
The Swedish godfathers of death metal have come a long way from their twenty-minute epic “Black Rose Immortal” days. They’ve traversed their grandma-loving Damnation and happened upon their first happy sounding song “Atonement.” It’s actually kind of refreshing to see a band go through some changes in the span of a quarter-century. But change for the sake of change isn’t automatically a good thing. And change for a lot of bands just means doing the same thing in reverse. What’s more important than changing is growing, and that’s what Opeth seems to be doing with Sorceress.
Heritage was one of various pivotal moments in the band’s career, marking a starch change in sound if a bit soft at its foundation. Pale Communion seemed to explore more avenues in that world and discovered spoils worth filling out the album’s figure. Sorceress still lingers in the post-Watershed realm, but stands strong in its own iconoclasm.
The new LP doesn’t sound like much else out there. The album’s “ballad” “Will O The Wisp” sounds like Jethro Tull for like eight seconds, and towards the end “A Fleeting Glance” opens with a Renaissance-esque motive, but that’s about it. Even “The Seventh Sojourn,” making heavy use of the eastern-sounding harmonic minor as metal often does, avoids sounding like another typical musical trope.
In fact, the only thing Sorceress does sound like, is the obscure symphonic Italian prog rock band Il Paese dei Balocchi, a band so obscure that its audience currently consists of everyone who read the same Mikael Åkerfeldt interview. Their iconoclastic and esoteric self-titled album is an important reference though, as it clearly highlights the structure of Opeth’s LP, of the non sequiturs that’d make Watershed jealous, and the sporadic genre shifts throughout songs.
It isn’t as catchy or accessible as Pale Communion, however, and this may just be the result of the band digging deeper or not caring at all about their reception, which is not necessarily a bad thing. Both the tracks “Sorceress” and “The Wilde Flowers” have pretty consistent riffs, though, hitting hard on the downbeats and driving the songs with the same headstrong attitudes Ghost of Perdition and Watershed had. The song “Chrysalis” even opens up with something eerily reminiscent of “The Lotus Eater.” That’s where the similarities end, however.
“Will O The Wisp” and “The Seventh Sojourn” both provide additional backbone to the tracklist, adding folk and eastern aesthetics respectively. The rest of the album is decorated with free-flowing and through-composed stylings that are much more akin to previously mentioned Italian prog than to Opeth’s older heavy-part-to-soft-part-to-heavy-part composition. About halfway through “The Wilde Flowers” the main riff is dropped for an acoustic interlude with harp blemishes. “Chrysalis” does the same in exchange for an interval of phased drumming. “The Seventh Sojourn” makes sure to go out with high airy vocals after the ethnic strings play their part. Both “A fleeting Glance” and “Era” break song form towards the end for beautiful and relatively catchy outros.
By now Opeth’s career is starting to resemble the likes of Björk, Bowie, and Radiohead by entering less-catchy-full-auteur mode after firmly establishing themselves as credible musicians. And while its very possible that Opeth may never achieve the same accolades as the metal-founding bands of Metallica and kin (like how no band could ever be as good as The Beatles, even if they technically were), they prove to the metal community and are crowning examples of music that isn’t a caricature of itself or made up of contrived career moves. They prove that it’s possible for music to continue to grow and change with its creators and listeners alike without sacrificing whatever deeper intangible human-stuff it originated from to begin with.
